Playing with Fire: fire safety with Prof. Peter Sunderland

by Maia Werbos

Fire is dangerous. Even with
the best equipment and protocols for extinguishing fires,
once something starts to burn,
people and property get hurt.
And that's why researchers like
Peter Sunderland, professor
of Fire Protection Engineering,
work on preventing fires.

As an undergraduate, Sunderland always leaned toward
engineering, but had many different interests. "Everybody
said mechanical engineering
was the most general, that you
could branch out from there,"
Sunderland said. He enjoyed
working in that industry for a
while, but eventually lost interest in what he was doing. "It
wasn't challenging enough," he
said. Since many of his most
successful colleagues had advanced degrees, Sunderland
decided to go back to get his
Ph.D.

Once he became a graduate
student, he realized that academia was right for him - he
liked the active, social aspect of
academia. "On campus, you're
always interacting with people,
all the time...the young people
and the students...are so alive
and excited and impressionable," he said.

Sunderland knew he wanted
to teach even while he was doing his Ph.D., but he didn't think
he would be able to secure a
faculty job until he had more
experience as a post-doctorate
researcher. According to Sunderland, a faculty job isn't easy,
especially in the first few years.
"Universities have found that
people straight out of a Ph.D. -
they can't do it," he said.

Sunderland also waited a
little longer to get an offer from
a top-notch school. "Early on
I had some offers from not as
good schools, but when this
one came along I was really excited," he said. He added that
the University of Maryland offers a strong fire protection engineering program, which very
few United States universities
can boast. "This one is the
strongest," Sunderland stated.

This careful lab setup allows Sunderland
and his students to be as safe as possible
while studying fire.

Since arriving at Maryland,
he has made broad contributions to research. Currently,
his largest project is studying soot. "It's what makes a
candle flame yellow instead of
blue," Sunderland explained. It
can also be a dangerous contributor to climate change. According to Sunderland, soot is
currently the leading source of
air-borne pollution in the United
States. "It is a much stronger
greenhouse gas than methane
or CO2 ."

Sunderland takes a different tack to studying soot than
many other researchers. Most
scientists study the formation
of soot. Sunderland, however,
prefers to study ways of removing soot. So, his experiments
focus on soot oxidization. "We
look at how fast it oxidizes; how
that depends on temperature,
species, and the type of soot,"
Sunderland said.

Fire safety is equally paramount for alternative fuels, like
hydrogen. Hydrogen fuel cells
are a promising source of energy, because burning hydrogen produces mostly water. But
they are also widely seen as
too risky to use in cars. Sunderland, however, helped make
progress on improving safety by
studying the flames that could
be produced by small leaks in a
hydrogen tank.

A lot of people looked at
the big leaks that explode, and
that's something to be concerned about," he said. "But
our idea was, instead of looking at these big explosions...to
look at the smallest ones you
could have with hydrogen." The
peril of small leaks is that drivers could have small escapes
of hydrogen from their car,
just enough to burn, that could cause huge leaks later. "You
might be going on a dirt road...
some kind of a spark will ignite it,
and these flames...even though
they're only like two or three millimeters high... you can't blow
them out," he said. And as the
small flames continue to burn,
they can damage the engine, until a larger release happens and
causes an explosion.

Aside from soot and fuel cells,
Sunderland also has several projects with NASA. One is for studying spherical flames, which form
in microgravity. "They look like
giant marbles that are glowing,"
he said. Another examines the
burning of several different items,
without actually conducting tests
on all of them, by using an apparatus that mimics the burning
of solids. "If you want to consider
how wood burns in space, and
paper, and Velcro, and all the
other materials the astronauts have up there,
including like, cotton
shirts and stuff, then you
have to do hundreds of
different tests," he said.
Instead, Sunderland
and his research team
use a porous piece of
metal through which
gas flows, which allows
astronauts to generalize
results more easily.

Over time, Sunderland has found that his
commitments to teaching and research have
changed. Nowadays, he
only spends about 30%
of his time on teaching
during the semester,
and about 70% on research, whereas when
he began his career,
he spent about 50% of
his time on teaching and preparation. Nonetheless, most of his
time on research is actually more
like teaching, because he is mentoring graduate and undergraduate students on their projects. "I
hardly ever go in the lab - and
if I [did] I think I'd break something," he said. Despite the way
the university separates research
and teaching, Sunderland sees
both as collaborative processes
of learning more about the world.

Using this apparatus, Sunderland and the students he mentors can
study the burning of soot in a controlled manner.

For undergraduates interested in research, he says that
finding a professor to work with
is not difficult. It may help to get
good grades. "Usually, if someone wants to work in the lab, they
can," Sunderland said. "Most faculty won't turn down [student volunteers]...we're happy to have a
chance to work with them."

As a professor, what he would
most like to see are students who
engage with their instructors,
who raise their hands in class,
come to office hours and make
an effort to connect with others.
After all, research is about collaborating - not only with people
near you. "You're collaborating
with everybody - the whole world
working on making advances,"
he said.

Besides contributing to science, Sunderland stated that researching has its other benefits.
"It's super fun," he said.
This careful lab setup allows Sunderland
and his students to be as safe as possible
while studying fire.